


Beneath His Feet, Beneath The Moon

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 52 Weeks of Wolfstar [22]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1990, Cemetery, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-First War with Voldemort, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 14:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4103908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus is thirty and going gray, and even the sun on his shoulders doesn't quite take the edge off his anger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beneath His Feet, Beneath The Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Week 22
> 
> This is a few days late, but on an entirely unrelated note, I'm done with high school (I've been busy).
> 
> I didn't mean to but somehow the title is a line from _The Hobbit._

Remus knew it would end like this, with an owl and an apology and a request that he return all of his current manuscripts. After nine years and twenty-nine jobs, he isn't surprised, only grateful to be paid through the end of the month.

He slides the manuscripts, each several sheets thick, into the sleeve and fixes it to the owl's leg. He watches the bird take flight and turns his face from his reflection in the window. Even his dress robes are so patched and frayed by now that they don't help his graying hair. Any other day, Remus wouldn't care. Today, he'd like to look nice.

At least it's sunny. He steps out of the cottage and stands blinking for a moment, feeling the warmth on his skin like arms around his shoulders. One last lungful of free air, and then he spins into nothingness.

The memorial is covered in dead leaves. Remus sighs and brushes them away, revealing the baby and his parents. They smile as serenely as ever. Remus dusts dirt off of James's ear, plucks a twig from Lily's shoes. Their stone faces regard him without seeing. He turns away.

There is an old woman standing before him, wrapped in a black shawl. "Mr. Lupin," Bathilda quavers. "I wondered if you'd be back this year."

Remus steps closer. She looks as if a strong wind would blow her away. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, you know." Bathilda waves a vague, liver-spotted hand. "Albus told me you'd found work again, and I thought you might be busy."

"Not too busy for this," Remus assures her, seeing in his mind the owl departing from his window. "How are you?"

Bathilda sniffs and blinks through the beginnings of cataracts. "Just fine, dear. Just fine." She looks past him, at the memorial, and sighs. "No matter how many times I walk past their house, I never quite get used to the rubble."

Remus shifts from foot to foot. He's only been to the house once, several years ago. He had some stupid feeling that if he never saw the dilapidation, it might all be just a very long dream.

"I used to come 'round for tea," Bathilda says. She touches the baby's forehead, where they say there is a scar now. Remus has never seen it. "Every Sunday and on his birthday." She sighs again, and looks up. "Were you going to the cemetery?" When Remus nods, she smiles. "I think I'll come along and pay my respects."

Remus offers her his arm, grateful for the company. They move slowly across the cobblestones of the square and through the quiet streets. At the cemetery gates Remus feels, as he always does, that split-second hesitation, the doubt, the sense that this isn't real—he is not about to visit _this_ grave. But it's been years since he entertained the thought for more than a moment. He knows it's real enough by now.

Bathilda makes small remarks about her Plangentine harvest as they walk through the tombstones. It's unseasonably warm for the first of November, and Remus finds himself smiling in spite of himself, in spite of the approaching moon twisting his stomach. He hasn't got a job but neither has Bathilda, and she's doing all right.

Dead leaves litter the tombstone as well, and Remus bends down to move them from the marble. As he does, the engraved words are revealed—names, dates, and verse.

"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,'" Bathilda reads slowly. "Did you choose that? It's very nice."

Remus nods. That first week was hell, with two funerals to plan. He remembers racking his brains for words, any words at all, and finding a bible in a dusty old box. It seemed to fit. "Thank you," he murmurs.

After a few minutes of silence, Bathilda pats him on the shoulder and leaves, inviting him to tea as she totters away. Remus smiles, and when she's gone he lets out a long breath. "Emmeline says she saw Harry a few weeks ago," he says. "She didn't talk to him, of course, but apparently she winked. He looked healthy, she said. He's doing fine. Next year he'll start school." As always, he wants to say more, but it gets stuck in his throat. Nine years he's been standing here, it seems, always trying to say one last thing. Goodbye, maybe, or that he misses them. That if he could, he'd kill Sirius—but even if it would bring them back, he isn't sure it's the truth. And he doesn't want to lie.

So here he stands, trying to speak and unable to do so. The wind rustles the leaves, and they shift to the base of the grave. He nudges them away with the toe of his shoe and swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. It hurts.

"Remus Lupin, I thought you'd gone and left the country for good. Back in my day, we actually talked to our friends."

He turns at the familiar voice and isn't surprised to see Andromeda looking at him with disapproval stamped across her face. "Good afternoon to you too," he says, pleased that he sounds as if he can breathe normally. "And you're only nine years older than me, by the way."

She smiles, seeming slightly sorry. "Did you forget how to write a letter?" she asks anyways. "The owls all molted at once?"

Remus runs a hand through his hair, rubs his nose. "I'm sorry," he says. He means it. "I've been busy."

"Busy feeling sorry for yourself." The way she says it, the words don't cut like they should. "What brought you back?"

"I was only gone for a few months," he reminds her, "and I've been home since August." Her eyes, that same stormy gray color that haunts his dreams, grant no reprieve. "I'm out of work again. Got the owl this morning."

Andromeda clicks her tongue in sympathy and comes closer, so that they're only a few steps apart. "Any idea what you'll do next?"

"Not really. Hopefully something with books." They both smile. "I'll just see what I can get."

A minute passes, and Andromeda is the one rubbing her nose. "I wouldn't be surprised if you got an offer to teach."

"Teach?" Remus blinks at her. "What, at Hogwarts?" She nods. He glances around and sees that the cemetery is almost deserted. "Dumbledore has always been good to me, but I highly doubt he wants a full-grown werewolf around all those children."

"And _I_ highly doubt that you'd be a threat to them. Don't you read the papers?" When Remus says nothing, she continues. "Damocles, the Potioneer, he's invented a—well, it's not a cure, exactly. It's called the Wolfsbane Potion. It's supposed to help."

"What does it do?"

"I don't know exactly, I'm sorry." Andromeda watches him for a few moments. "If you get the chance to teach, I think you should take it."

Remus shrugs, the novelty of a potion, even one with unclear effects, still filtering through his brain. "I used to want to teach," he says slowly. "I don't know that I'd be very good at it anymore. Or even what subject I would be fit for."

Andromeda doesn't tell him what she thinks about it, which is odd enough for her that Remus looks up. She's gazing at the tombstone as if she's just realized whose it is. "I stopped by your house earlier," she says, "but you weren't there, and then I remembered what day it is. So I knew I'd find you here."

If it were anyone else, Remus would think they were trying to embarrass him or subtly tell him to move on. But because it's Andromeda, he knows she isn't doing either of those things. "Were you thinking about him?" he asks.

"Naturally." She tosses her hair. "Were you?"

"Naturally."

"Are you angry?"

It surprises him that she knows, but then, she almost always knows. "Aren't you?" He could say more, but would it help? Would it make things better to talk about how furious he is—at Sirius, at Voldemort, at himself? At the whole Black family, present company excepted. Would he gain anything from telling Andromeda about how last New Year he burned a dozen photographs and letters? Would it fix a single thing if he shouted himself hoarse at the moon tomorrow night, as if Sirius could hear him—

He knows the answer. The only thing that would change would be the rate of his pulse.

Andromeda nods.

Remus feels a faint sense of surprise—over the years he has come to understand that Andromeda grieves less for Sirius's betrayal and more for the loss of faith in her own freedom from her roots. And he only asked because he didn't know what else to say. "Really? You're angry?"

Andromeda gives him a very strange look, much like the one he used to receive from her cousin when complaining about the full moon over breakfast. "Of course I'm angry," she says, in a tone that implies _you dolt._ "He did this to you."

The pride he has been carefully cultivating over the last few years would like him to deny it, but he knows that he is still treading water, his thirty-year-old, gray-haired head just barely above the threatening waves—and he flushes, of course he does. "I don't care about it," he says, shoving the words through his lips. "I don’t care about _him._ Fuck him." It scrapes his throat raw but he hasn't quite drowned yet.

The expression on Andromeda's face reminds him of the first frost, caught halfway between shock and warmth. Remus looks away and his gaze falls on the tombstone, which is unfortunate, because he remembers. He remembers that this is not just any grave, and here he is cursing—he _never_ curses—and not thinking about the friends upon whose bones he's standing. The anger seeps away, to return tomorrow perhaps, and he is left wrung-out and empty.

Andromeda squeezes his shoulder and says something too quiet for him to hear. When he looks up, he can't see her, although his vision is so blurry that it's difficult to tell if she's actually gone.

The thing is, he thinks, struggling to make out the verse through his tears, the thing is that James and Lily and even Peter may have destroyed their last enemy, but they can't tell him about it. And he is a firm believer in finishing what he's started, so there will probably be many more years of visiting this graveyard and drinking tea alone. Maybe someday he will see them and not wake up screaming later—but for now, they're gone and he's here.

Remus reaches out to grip the tombstone. The stone is sun-warmed and solid under his fingers; he inhales and wipes his eyes. Another wave almost engulfs him, but the tide goes out and he finds the strength to say something he never has told them before. "I'm sorry." This, too, chafes at his throat, but it's a better sort of ache.


End file.
